In the night of Palermo

His name was Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (photo), and he was a general of the carabinieri. It had stopped the slaughter of the red-black terrorism of the 1970s. They sent him to Palermo as prefect, to try with the mafia. He didn't have time.
The men of dishonor killed him a few months after his arrival, a handful of days enough to prove what he was. Better to stop him now, before he really does the fight against the mafia, the godparents must have thought. He went around town without an escort. They waited for him one evening when he was going to the restaurant in a small anonymous car, wreaking havoc. It was September 3, 1982. An agent who followed him by car and his wife fell with him.

Her name was Emanuela Setti Carraro, she had married the general a few months earlier and had immediately wanted to follow him to Palermo, aware of the risks. An unexpected love, which blossomed in the military environment: Emanuela is a Red Cross nurse, participates in public events in uniform, there she meets the general, older than her, widower of his first wife Dora, father of three grown children. The common ideals of justice, service, discipline, love of God and love of country unite them in a relationship of love and respect, fidelity and consistency to shared values. They get married quickly, as if they knew they have so little time.

They both die, embraced, in that white subcompact in the sultry night of Palermo, of this wonderful and ferocious city that kills gentlemen and, by now, does not spare women and children. He kept a precious diary, Emanuela Setti Carraro. He wrote to you: "Saint Catherine says:" if each of us gave the best of himself we could bring Italy into focus "". And then: «Saint Catherine used to say: 'hold up your heart and let it be like a lamp that burns'». If I had also lived in the fourteenth century, I would have gone with her to Avignon, but now, what could even Saint Catherine do against this state? There would be a great need for a testimony, a saint and a holocaust. Maybe then things would change. "

Again, after the meeting of the Alpine troops in Genoa: "We have finally seen the general from the Church. I gave him a red carnation and he wrote me his signature on the back of his invitation card. Who knows what that meant. " Witness, holiness, holocaust, putting Italy on fire. The Palermo night would seem to swallow everything. But no. Even today Carlo Alberto and Emanuela shine, “like a burning lamp”.

Renzo Agasso
NP October 2020